United States is Losing Out on International Tourism
The United States is losing ground when it comes to attracting foreign tourists. U.S. Department of Commerce put out figures showing that international travel to the U.S. grew 3.5 percent last year. That sounds like good news, but in fact the US is falling behind because the global growth was at 7 percent.
America’s share of the global travel market dropped from 13.7 percent in 2015 to just 11.7 percent in 2018, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
A two percent drop is huge since tourism is a major industry in the states. In 2018 for example, international visitors to the U.S. spent $256 billion. A 2% bump would be another $5 billion.
Last year, travelers spent a total $1.1 trillion in the U.S. and directly supported 8.9 million U.S. jobs, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
Chinese tourism has been one of the factors in this decrease. They have recently issued several advisories for their citizens, regarding travel to the United States. Last year alone there were 3.2 million less Chinese visitors than the previous year.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
“A two percent drop is huge since tourism is a major industry in the states. In 2018 for example, international visitors to the U.S. spent $256 billion. A 2% bump would be another $5 billion.”
This math is totally wrong. International tourism to the U.S. didn’t drop by 2% (we don’t know if it went up or down), the U.S. _share_ of the international tourism market dropped by two percentage _points_.
bingo!
I wonder if the strength of the US Dollar is making a trip to the US prohibitively expensive for some people.
China cannot approve US visas. Its the US embassies that issues US visas. Its US who can decide whom to let in or not.
Lots of foreigners are turned off by Trump’s policies and they vote with their tourist dollars by going elsewhere.
China has not been approving US Visas for as many tourists.
The increased level of immigration to the US offsets any economic losses in the tourism sector. Their tourist dollars are effectively US dollars now.
China doesn’t approve U.S. visas (unless you’re talking about Americans visiting China – but that’s not the subject of this post). For Chinese visiting the U.S., they have to get their visas from the U.S. embassy or consulates in China, which has nothing to do with the Chinese government.
Frankly there are so many better places to visit and not smell the stench of the homeless particularly San Francisco which in the summer is particularly vile there’s Portland and Seattle. Hawaii is gouging the tourist essentially biting the hand that feels them should I go on?
When we vacation we do so abroad. Not that there isn’t homelessness abroad their issue are the illegal migrants which makes some of their cities not safe. As for China —–
Any analysis of international tourism trends needs to take into account currency fluctuations. The US dollar is very strong right now especially vs the Euro, Pound, Ruble, and Peso, making it very expensive to visit the US
And the Chinese don’t want to visit the US—they want to move to the US
But we’re making foreigners feel so welcome…